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LucasArts
LucasArts Entertainment Company, LLC is an American video game licensor. Until 2013, it was also a video game developer and publisher. LucasArts is best known for its graphic adventure games, as well as games based on the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises. Its headquarters are located in San Francisco, California. It was founded in May 1982 by George Lucas as Lucasfilm Games, the video game development group of his film company, Lucasfilm. Lucas initially served as the company's chairman. During a 1990 reorganization of Lucas companies, the Lucasfilm Games division was renamed LucasArts. Following the acquisition of Lucasfilm by The Walt Disney Company in 2012, Disney closed down LucasArts as an internal developer on April 3, 2013, and laid off most of its staff. Development of games based on the Star Wars license will be developed by Electronic Arts, through an exclusive license, for the core gaming market. Disney Interactive Studios retained the ability to develop, and LucasArts retained the ability to license, the franchise for the casual gaming market. evelopment of video games based upon other Lucasfilm properties will now be assumed by Disney Interactive Studios or licensed to third parties. History The company was founded in May 1982 as the video game development group of Lucasfilm Limited, the film production company of George Lucas. Lucas wanted his company to branch out into other areas of entertainment, so he cooperated with Atari to produce video games. The first results of this collaboration were unique action games like Ballblazer in 1984, and Rescue on Fractalus!. Beta versions of both games were leaked to pirate bulletin boards exactly one week after Atari had received unprotected copies for a marketing review, and were in wide circulation months before the original release date. In 1984, they were released for the Atari 5200 under the Lucasfilm Games label. Versions for home computers were not released until 1985, by publisher Epyx. Lucasfilm's next two games were Koronis Rift and The Eidolon. Their first games were only developed by Lucasfilm, and a publisher would distribute the games. Atari published their games for Atari systems, Activision and Epyx would do their computer publishing. Maniac Mansion was the first game to be published and developed by Lucasfilm Games. The early charter of Lucasfilm Games was to make experimental, innovative, and technologically advanced video games. Habitat, an early online role-playing game, was one such title. It was only released as a beta test in 1986 by Quantum Link, an online service for the Commodore 64. Quantum Link could not provide the bandwidth at the time to support the game, so the full Habitat was never released outside of the beta test. However, Lucasfilm Games recouped the cost of development by releasing a sized down version called Club Caribe in 1998. Lucasfilm later licensed the software to Fujitsu, who released it in Japan as Fujitsu Habitat in 1990. Fujitsu later licensed Habitat for worldwide distribution, and released an updated version called WorldsAway in 1996. The latest iteration of Habitat is VZones, which was released in 2003. In 1990, in a reorganization of the Lucas companies, the Games Division of Lucasfilm became part of the newly created LucasArts Entertainment Company, together with Industrial Light & Magic and Skywalker Sound. Later ILM and Skywalker Sound were consolidated in Lucas Digital Ltd. and LucasArts became the official name of the former Games Division. Games Indiana Jones *''Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings'' Lego Indiana Jones *''Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures (2008)'' *''Lego Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues (2009)'' Star Wars Lego Star Wars *''Lego Star Wars: The Video Game (2005)'' *''Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy (2006)'' *''Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga (2007)'' *''Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars (2011)'' The Force Unleashed *''Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (2008)'' *''Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II (2010)'' Thrillville *''Thrillville'' *''Thrillville: Off the Rails'' External Links *Official LucasArts Website *The Workshop – Official LucasArts Blog *The International House of Mojo fan-site Category:Production Category:Star Wars Category:M.U.G.E.N Category:M.U.G.E.N: Ultimate All-Stars Wiki